Adele_L comments on Better Rationality Through Lucid Dreaming - Less Wrong

10 Post author: katydee 18 October 2013 08:48PM

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Comment author: katydee 19 October 2013 09:37:01PM *  2 points [-]

I fully admit that I do not have strong outside-view evidence that this method will objectively improve your rationality-- if I did, I would post it. But many (most?) rationality techniques discussed here lack such evidence as well.

Anecdotally, I can say that it seems to have been quite effective for me and there are many inside-view elements pointing towards this as a strong method.

That may not be fully convincing, and I agree it's a problem. Indeed, one of the main reasons that I posted this is that I hope others will attempt the same or similar and we can get a broader picture of this space.

Comment author: Adele_L 22 October 2013 02:24:03AM 1 point [-]

I fully admit that I do not have strong outside-view evidence that this method will objectively improve your rationality-- if I did, I would post it. But many (most?) rationality techniques discussed here lack such evidence as well.

This seems like something that should be fixed. A few ideas:

  • Scientific studies - seems to slow, requires dealing with academia... I think we can do better.
  • Well designed self-experimentation - Gwern's studies on nootropics are the best examples I know of, but there are others like [Seth Robert's] self experiments.
  • Studies done by a more formal organization - For example, I think CFAR might be doing studies like this.

Regarding my second point, it seems that this sort of thing could benefit a lot from a division of labor - where a small group of people design the experiments, and many more people just follow the instructions. It might be worth trying to organize a group of people willing to participate in these sorts of experiments, so that it is easier to test rationality techniques.

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